There are good financial incentives to turn to social media marketing

Online promotion can often be financially expensive, but promotion through social media can prove the most cost-effective type of online marketing… provided, we emphasise, it is used expertly. This huge potential is largely due to the major social media websites being free to register and post to.

The low financial risk of social media marketing makes it ideal for small, inexperienced businesses in particular to turn to. However, businesses both large and small can use social media to effectively keep in touch with their audiences.

You can help avoid “the one that got away”

In fact, the ease with which businesses can use social media to continue regularly contacting their past and current customers might be one of the biggest benefits of this type of online promotion.

Once someone who has benefitted from a business has chosen to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ that company on a social media website, they can continue to receive regular updates from that company long afterwards. This provides a golden opportunity for that business to post genuinely intriguing and informative content to its social media page and so encourage the customer to keep the company in mind for when they might want to turn to them again.

Basically, customers can be much easier to keep than gain. If a company impresses a customer through social media, this can encourage valuable repeat business.

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What exactly makes web design and web development ‘bespoke’?

The word ‘bespoke’ is often used to describe anything that is put together to individual, custom instructions. You have likely already, throughout your life, made use of bespoke services of many different types, but have you ever turned to bespoke services for the design and development of your company’s website? Below are several good reasons why you should consider doing so.

Why a bespoke solution can be special

For the creation or revamping of your business website, there is the option of using a pre-determined template and then adding to and tweaking it to meet your company’s unique needs. However, a genuinely bespoke solution would involve starting entirely from scratch and, especially in the long term, can lead to more fruitful promotion of your company.

This is largely because, the more custom-made your company’s website is, the better it can serve your company’s specific requirements. In a world where the sectors, products and aims of businesses can hugely vary, one size far from fits all for effective business websites.

You can look forward to sharply improved ROI

Ultimately, you should avoid trying to attract anybody to your website; instead, you should focus your efforts and resources on people who are particularly likely to be interested in what your company offers.

Bespoke design and development can much assist you in this mission, and this can lead to much better ROI than would be the case if your website was built around a rigid template. We at SEO Local have experienced designers and developers who offer bespoke services.

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Still, there are several crucial steps for you to heed when you set out to write a blog post that is effective in this manner. Below are what we consider the five most vital.

Carefully choose what subject to write about

A blog post should not be too ambitious, but focus on a particular subject before linking it to something your company offers. If, for example, your business sells DVDs, a blog post could focus on current tours of popular stand-up comedians before drawing attention to DVDs of those tours that can be preordered from your business.

Research suitable keywords

Your blog post could include both generic keywords, like those referring to your company as a whole, and more obscure keywords that refer to specific products or services.

Stick strictly to ‘white hat’ SEO techniques

There are several search engine optimisation methods that you can use when writing, but remember to stick to ‘white hat’ methods – in other words, methods that can increase your website’s search engine rankings without risking big penalties from Google.

Include links to useful and interesting content

This will add value to your blog post, in the view of both visitors and Google, and so further contribute to a rise in your website’s visibility in SERPs. Include links to both other websites and other pages of your company’s website.

Seek valuable assistance from SEO Local

Writing a successful blog post isn’t easy, but knowledgeable staff of SEO Local can help you along the way or even write entire blog posts on your behalf.

The post Five steps for writing a successful blog post appeared first on SEO Local Ltd.

However, if you have noticed that your website often takes much time to load, you could soon have a further major incentive to find ways of quickening it up.

A fresh reason for a need for speed?

K Neeraj Kayastha, a Google+ user, recently used the social networking platform to report that, while conducting a Google search using incognito mode on his Android device, he spotted a red label reading “Slow” in the search results.

He even posted a screenshot which clearly shows the label apparently indicating the slow speed of pages on two of Google’s own websites, Google Scholar and YouTube. Several other Google users have since reported being unable to replicate the “Slow” label on their own devices. This suggests that the search giant has merely been testing the feature and has not yet decided whether to make it permanent.

However, Google has previously introduced a similar label – indicating “mobile-friendly” websites – after a period of testing, so now could be an especially good time for companies to work at shortening their websites’ loading times.

How can you help speed up your website?

Even if Google do not actually go ahead with this red label, your website’s speed will continue to influence its search rankings. SEO Local has specialist web design and development staff who can make use of their many years of industry experience and implement the most modern web technologies and practices to help to make your website zippier. Get in touch today!

The post Hurry up: Google testing red warning label for slow websites? appeared first on SEO Local Ltd.

The Android app can be downloaded from the Google Play store, and is useful for everything from the adjustment of bids to getting support and receiving notifications of changes. The app is a comprehensive mobile solution for keep tracking of how your campaigns are going, with campaign statistics able to be viewed and bids and budgets updated.

Real-time alerts and notifications make it easier for the app’s Canadian users to respond quickly to the latest developments, perhaps after contacting a Google professional directly through the app. It isn’t the first time Google has released an AdWords-related app, this having occurred in July 2014, but that was for the simplified Express version of the advertising platform, aimed at small businesses.

The new app for Canadian users isn’t the only move that Google has made as of late to make the lives of AdWords users easier. That’s because the search giant has also just introduced a single page showing all of the most recent updates. The new page, which you can view here, gives users a convenient overview of the newest updates, on a month-by-month basis, chronologically ordered.

The page constitutes a list of release notes, with the updates announced in February 2015, for instance, including performance-related fixes for the AdWords Editor and the automatic conversion of eligible Flash ads on the Google Display Network to HTML5 ads. Upgraded URLs have also been introduced, meaning that landing page and tracking URLs can now be managed separately.

Recent months have also seen enhancements to Google Trusted Stores that enable more confident online purchases, Google Partners certification being made available for Google Shopping and the introduction of a new Diagnostics tab for easier troubleshooting in Merchant Center.

The one-line updates displayed on this release notes page is also linked to either a help document or a blog post providing further details for the user.

In a blog post announcing the change, Google’s Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing, expressed hope that the new page would help users to “stay up to date with AdWords as a ‘one-stop shop’ for discovering new innovations and helpful best practices.”

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